Trust
by Socrates7727
Summary: Written for the International Wizarding School Championship! Luna discovers her Achilles' Heel... not happy! Judges explanation inside. Warning: character death!


Story Title: Trust

School: Mahoutokoro

Theme: Artemis

Main Prompt: Medusa

Other Prompts: Achilles' Heel

Year: 4

Word Count: 3493

Explanation for Judges: I chose Luna to represent the theme of Artemis because of her affinity and connection with animals, wildlife, and innocence. I believe that she would have been a Huntress of Artemis in Ancient Greek culture, but she allows her innocent and playful side to show with things that are not a threat, such as the forest creatures.

This story closely follows the story of Medusa *spoiler alert here* with the fundamental plotline something corrupt happening in an otherwise good place (the recruitment of the forest animals for the dark side). She then turns to her father, as Medusa turned to Athena after her assault, and is dismissed. Her curse, rather than becoming a gorgon, is that she then suffers the betrayal of her father not believing her, and the isolation from her closest family (as Medusa was isolated from human contact). Medusa is then hunted down and slain for her head, as Luna is sought out and kidnapped (and killed) for her hair. As Medusa's head was then used by men in battle to turn their enemies to stone, Luna's connection with the animals is then used (via Polyjuice Potion) after her death for the dark side, as a final perversion of what was solely hers.

Finally, this story centers around the prompt of Achilles' Heel. Luna's Achilles' Heel ends up being the trust she gives and establishes with the creatures of the forest, which is ultimately used against her and is what destroys her. It is not what kills her, directly, but it is what breaks her spirit.

AN I do not own HP or any of the characters, also this is not at all happy! Apologies.

* * *

Luna Lovegood had been many things in her life—a baby, a singer, a broccoli harvester, a student—and she wavered on all of them. Things like that were never meant to be permanent. It was good that they weren't, she often thought, because restricting oneself to something so rigid was hard on the soul. People were supposed to grow with time, like babersnoks or oak trees, but they were also supposed to change. Male, female, tall, short, alive… dead. Humans weren't meant to be permanent.

It wasn't a bad thing, though—to be temporary—and Luna enjoyed it very much most of the time. There was one thing that never changed, however, and even her father used to chide her for it, joking that she would become rigid like everyone else if she didn't give it up too. She never did, though.

The one thing that Luna refused to compromise on was her trust. Luna gave kindness and love away like they were pamphlets on a street corner, and she never once regretted it. Sure, people had hurt her. When she trusted so many—both people, and creatures—the odds were certainly against her… It was inevitable. Even when she was hurt by it, though, Luna never considered cynicism or suspicion as a solution. The world was dark—she knew that—but that had never stopped her before.

"Good afternoon, Hamish! Lovely day for a stroll, isn't it?" Hamish was, in fact, a toad and could not understand her but he, like most of the creatures in the forest, knew her voice. He gave an excited little _brrrruup!_

"Ah, yes, you're completely right. It wouldn't do for Cece to be out hopping on that broken toe so soon. Do take care!" Hamish croaked and hopped off back beneath the cover of his tree root, but Luna merely smile at him and continued on her way. The forest was her happy place. Well, everywhere was her happy place—or, at least, she tried to think that way—but the forest was her peaceful place.

"Kia!" Ahead in the clearing, Luna spotted the golden coat of a unicorn foal and knew that the mother had to be nearby. When she reached the foal, though, Kia was nowhere to be found.

"Hey little one," she soothed, running her hand over the foal's shoulder. "Where's your mum?" It was highly unusual for Kia to leave the foal unattended, and Luna knew that better than most. Clearly, whatever had pulled the attention of the unicorn was important. For a moment, Luna felt a pang of fear in her chest at the idea that Kia may have been killed again, like Hermes and Bertrand had back in her first year. The Dark Lord was stronger now, though, and he didn't need unicorn blood anymore. Right?

A sudden snort drew her attention to the left, where Kia was breaking through the treeline with her ears pinned back. Luna turned just in time to see a flash of darkness. Were the Nargles up to something? She had met nearly every creature in the forest by now, and none of them wore darkness like robes or ran from her.

"Hello, Kia." She bowed, but her attention lingered on where the shadow had disappeared. What kind of creature could make a unicorn look so… disgusted? Kia bowed back, and nuzzled at her foal. Luna knew she couldn't ask, and she wouldn't get a straight answer from the unicorn even if she could, but the curiosity must have been evident on her face because Kia cocked her head to one side.

"Is everything alright?" Kia wouldn't answer, but Luna didn't need her to. She saw the agitated little swish in Kia's tail and the and the darkness that overcame those gorgeous eyes and she knew it wasn't okay. Something was wrong.

* * *

Luna Lovegood, as a general rule, did not cry. It wasn't that she was opposed to it, per se, and she understood that it was very useful for other people to do, but she tried very hard to never take life that seriously. After all, everything was temporary—even she was temporary. There was no point in getting upset about things that were, to the Earth, barely a flash of fairy light. It wouldn't matter, in the end.

At least, that was what she kept telling herself. Tears began to crawl down her cheeks, even as she told herself that it didn't matter, and they carved angry, wet red lines into her skin. For the first time in her life, Luna understood the urge to simply sob on the ground.

He didn't believe her. Seventeen years… Seventeen bloody years worth of ideas and stories that the rest of the world scoffed at and _this_ was what he chose to draw the line at? _This_ was what somehow changed his mind about her? Xenophilius Lovegood had never once questioned her… He had never once made her believe that she was crazy, or that she was anything but unique. They could both see things that no one else could—not even her mother—and for years that had united them through any kind of conflict or argument. But _this_?

He didn't believe her… The entire forest—Merlin, every living thing within its walls—was in danger and he didn't believe her. How could he not _believe_ her?! For seventeen years, she had seen things and understood things that no one else seemed to even notice and she'd thought that he did too, but now? Had he just been humoring her, ever since she was a child? Could he even _see_ the Nargles?

He didn't believe her. Somehow that thought just couldn't quite make its way through her mind. It kept getting stuck, caught on little thorns of _but he's always believed and what about the creatures_? The creatures! Even if he didn't believe her, wouldn't he at least take the chance that she was right if it meant saving thousands of innocent lives? They were being recruited, for Merlin's sake! Who else but a bloody deatheater had the nerve to approach a _unicorn_ and ask them to join the dark side?

But he didn't believe her. Which meant that, for the first time in her life, Luna was completely alone. It pounded in her veins like liquid glass and she wondered, half-heartedly, if this was how other people had been feeling when she'd seen them cry. Was this what it took to break a human spirit? It didn't matter—that was what she told herself, over and over again—but for some reason it still stung. He didn't believe her… The first real threat she had ever tried to warn him of, and he didn't believe her.

No matter. Luna stood and shook herself off, despite the tears still clinging her to face. If he didn't believe her, then she simply had to act on her own. Her stomach churned at the mere idea of it, but she heaved herself off the floor anyways and started for the closest exit. He didn't believe her, but that didn't mean she would abandon them. People were temporary—her father was temporary—and even if her father had just stabbed a knife in her back with four simple words, she had to do _something_.

Kia would believe her. Hamish and Cece would believe her, and so would all the other creatures. The mermaids would splash each other until she laughed, the centaurs would show her their rarest flower gardens, and the gnomes would pinch at her feet until she had to stop moping around. Humans could fight their wars, and her father could join them, but Luna refused to watch her friends get caught up in the crossfire.

Kia would believe her—she had to, even if Luna had to scratch her warning into the Earth itself. They would be okay, they could still be okay… Her feet slammed against the stone floor as she ran for the doors, but her mind was reeling. She needed a plan. If the deatheaters were recruiting in the forest, then they surely had to be low on numbers and that had to be a good sign—didn't it? Finally, she gasped in fresh oxygen but she couldn't stop. They could flee. They could run until the entire world collapsed beneath their feet, but what would be the point in that?

No, there didn't need to be a point. The creatures of the forest had survived so long because they stayed out of human affairs—they didn't fight in petty wars. This wasn't petty, of course, but that wouldn't matter because humans were too human to be trusted. They were fallible and selfish and disloyal and… human. No, the creatures wouldn't fight. That would keep them safe, wouldn't it? Humans were temporary, and she could die with the rest of them, but the creatures had stayed out of it for so long that surely they would be okay in the end. Wouldn't they?

* * *

She was running. Luna was running harder than she'd ever run in her life because some part of her just _needed_ to be in the forest, to get to the creatures before something bad happened, or even to just escape. Her legs were burning, threatening to give out, but they didn't get the chance. One second she was fleeing, and then—

"Petrificus Totalus!" She hit the ground, but couldn't feel the pain because her mind was numb with shock. Who would have immobilized her, and why? But then she got her answer, and she suddenly wished that she had never asked because the trio of Slytherins who emerged from the darkness spelled trouble. Pansy, among them, seemed the most agitated.

"Do I really have to become this blonde twit?" Malfoy elbowed her, but merely rolled his eyes when he saw Luna looking at them. Without another word, she felt the world go black. Since when could Malfoy cast wordless, wandless sleeping charms? The darkness whispered and beckoned to her, though, until she had no choice but to give in to it. She let her mind fall as useless as her body, levitated between the Slytherins.

* * *

Luna woke with a jolt. There was a blinding pain in her skull and fire above her right ear but she had to blink back tears before she could see anything. What—

"Look what you did! Now we have to clean the hair, you idiot!" That voice was familiar… Where did she know it from, though? In front of her, Blaise bowed his head and held out fist fulls of long, blood-soaked blonde hair that Luna recognized all too well. Her stomach fell through the floor. It was her hair…

"What are you doing to me?" Her voice was shocking strong, given how shaky she felt, but the sound alone seemed to anger her captors more than anything. Someone cast a silencing charm on her. Merlin, they were piling her hair up by the cauldron full, and she understood now that someone had cut her with the scissors when she'd jumped. Blood trickled, warm and wet, down the side of her face.

It all disappeared in a flash of green.

* * *

Avada kedavra: the first words that entered Luna's mind when she woke up. Wait, that wasn't right. People didn't "wake up" from the killing curse. She risked a glance at her own hands and grimaced when they were a pale, transparent blue. A ghost, then.

Shockingly, Luna was fairly alright with this realization. She was alright with dying, she was alright with whatever the hell had happened with the Slytherins, and she was alright with being dead. After all, humans were temporary—even her. It wasn't the fact that she was dead that bothered her, really, it was the idea that she'd left her friends to battle the dark side on their own.

Sure enough, the entire courtyard seemed to be engulfed in a rage of bloodshed and battle cries. Gryffindors lay dead all over the stone. She knew from the red of their robes that they had to be Gryffindors—and the fact that they were on the front lines—but then she stepped a bit closer and stopped. The robes weren't Gryffindor red, they were _blood_ red. Students from every house lay dead like pieces of rubble, forgotten amidst the yelling and the fighting—but they were all the same once their robes were soaked with crimson.

Luna was ready for a lot of things as a ghost. She was prepared to be unable to manifest or communicate yet, she was prepared for no one to see her, and she was prepared to watch the people she called friends sacrifice themselves for the cause. She was not, however, prepared to see herself standing there, wand drawn, between Neville and Padma. But she was… dead?

Luna watched herself fight for the light side. Was this what happened in the afterlife—just a constant replay of how you'd died? That didn't seem right, though. She remembered her death and it hadn't been here, during the battle. Did her hands normally sway like that, at her sides and stiff as if she was trapping her own movements beneath her skin? When had she learned to cast petrification spells like that? Honestly, the longer she watched, the less Luna understood.

Until she saw a stripe of dark hair.

Luna, dead or alive, could still remember the way Hermione's real eyes had flashed behind her cat ones in their second year. She knew what the Polyjuice Potion looked like when it was wearing off. Halfheartedly, she felt at her head and wasn't shocked to find bare skin where there should have been hair—Pansy was taking a swig from a flask, now, and Luna swore internally as the stripe turned blonde again. But then the flask was flying, pouring uselessly over the stone, and Pansy was shrieking after it.

It didn't matter, though. Between the people screaming for their lives and the bellowing of curses across the courtyard, no one bothered with Pansy's little yelp. Of course it was Pansy… Luna hadn't understood when they'd taken her hair and she hadn't understood why the Slytherins had ambushed her—she still didn't understand, in all honesty—but Pansy made sense. No one really paid attention to the Slytherins. If one were to go missing, she doubted that anyone would notice aside from Malfoy, maybe.

The Slytherins kept to themselves and never really made friends. But why, then, was Luna so shocked that no one was recognizing her mannerisms? Maybe it wasn't the fact that they didn't recognize Pansy that bothered her, as much as that they clearly didn't know Luna well enough to tell the difference. She never tied her hair back like that. Not once, in all her years of life, had Luna ever dared to call someone any kind of curse word. Didn't her friends _know_ that?

They didn't, though, and if they did they evidently weren't stopping to consider it in the middle of a battle. Luna tried as hard as she could to influence the battle, though she knew it was pointless as a newly formed spirit, and yet it still was with a breath of relief that she saw the dark side retreat. Even when the Slytherins changed sides, even when more deatheaters appeared… Fate, it seemed, was on the side of the light for once—they might be okay, after all.

But Luna spoke too soon. The dark side was retreating, backing towards the forest, and it seemed like a win for the good guys but then there were… bowtruckles? Tiny little twigs of life sprang up from the ground, riding on the shoulders of deatheaters like little mascots, and Luna actually stopped to stare. What in Merlin's name…?

There were thestrals, now, and centaurs, and giant spiders, and merfolk hissing angrily in magically suspended bubbles of water and Luna couldn't believe her eyes. Hippogriffs began swooping down from the heavens, tearing limbs from their owners. She risked a glance at Malfoy, to see if he'd freak out, but he was too distracted dueling with a pack of Gryffindors to notice. They were fighting. The creatures of the forest were fighting a human's war—and they were fighting for the _wrong side_.

It wasn't until she saw the unicorns, though, that Luna truly froze. She couldn't breathe or move and she was so unbelievably glad that she was a ghost because otherwise she would have dropped dead right then and there. Her mind was reeling. What could possibly have made the creatures fight? What, in the name of Rowena Ravenclaw, could have forced such amazing creatures—who were so pure, so untainted by human violence—to take up weapons of their own?

_Merlin_ Luna suddenly understood why everyone was so afraid of the creatures she considered family. Gnomes started popping up out of the ground like… well, like gnomes but they carried knives and they slashed at the ankles of wizards who didn't know better. Stampedes of centaurs charged through the debris and distracted the light side. But then… they started to drop.

The first centaur to hit the ground felt like a thousand knives in Luna's chest. It wasn't that he was dead, it wasn't even that he'd fallen victim to very same killing curse that she had, it was the fact that _Neville_ was the one behind the wand. Before Luna could even scream, though, the damage was worse. Blood dripped from the talons of hippogriffs now, and it wasn't human blood—Merlin there weren't enough healing spells in the world to fix the damage that she was seeing. These creatures didn't have bloody wands! How could anyone expect them to defend themselves against a bunch of bloody witches and wizards!?

That was the point, though. The realization hit her hard enough to take her to her knees—though it didn't matter, because no one could see her. They weren't making a difference in the battle, really, they were just a distraction. Something unexpected. An advantage—easily killed, easily replaced. She heaved on the stone but her ghost stomach was empty. This was her _family_! Her friends were standing, not even aware that she was gone and had been replaced, and they were killing her _family_!

They weren't useful, they were cannon fodder.

It was the sight of Kia, down on two knees in a twisted sort of bow, that made Luna's mind focus. Kia—the oldest, calmest, most patient and pure creature she had ever met—was kneeling on the stone and completely drenched in blood. Her foal lay dead, still twitching from a cruciatus curse.

Luna screamed.

She screamed for every life that she felt slipping away from her, she screamed for every member of her family that fell dead at her feet. She screamed at her father, for not listening to her. She screamed at her friends, for not recognizing the imposter, and she screamed at the dark side for daring to corrupt something so pure. She screamed until someone finally stopped.

It wasn't the battle. What was one tortured voice amidst a thousand other cries of pain? But she stood there, shaking with rage, and she screamed so loud that every single nonhuman ear turned to her. The merfolk dismissed her, the hippogriffs screeched in protest, and the gnomes began to burrow back down into the Earth to hide from the noise. Hamish was there, croaking and hopping wildly in all directions to avoid the curses being shot at him. It was Kia, though, that heard her.

It was Kia that she watched, sobbing, as that bloodsoaked hide began to turn a translucent blue. The body fell, but just for a moment Kia's spirit locked eyes with hers.

"Kia… Why? Why would you ever fight, and for _them_!?" For the first time in her entire life, Luna watched the unicorn bow her head to examine the body of her dead foal. Those gorgeous, mercury eyes were sharp with grief. Merlin… But all Luna could think was _why_?

"Because you asked us to trust you one last time, Luna." Kia disappeared, off to some spirit world for creatures who didn't have unfinished business, but Luna felt like she'd been gutted. She'd… asked them to? When had she…?

"_Parkinson_?!" Oh. And then it all made sense, suddenly, as Luna watched herself transform at last into Pansy Parkinson's normal, pug-shaped face. The potion made sense, the hair made sense, even the bloody kidnapping made sense… Yet Luna somehow couldn't breathe anymore. Humans were temporary—she knew that, relished it even—but trust was forever and she'd always believed that. _Always_.

They'd trusted her. Every single living creature that Luna had ever considered family lay slaughtered and cursed at her feet, used for a pointless suicide mission for the wrong bloody side… Because they'd trusted her. Suddenly, it didn't matter that she was dead or that her friends were fighting to save the world. Even in death, the one thing she had always depended on was the one thing that managed to cripple her—her family… gone.

Because they'd trusted her.

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review and also I am sorry this is depressing... forgive me?


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